Dubbing their cooperation no less than a “strategic alliance”, BNP Paribas Securities Services will trust Aladdin to perform “middle office outsourced services maintaining Aladdin’s Investment Book of Record as the trusted source of data,” says the press release.

Front-to-back integration along the securities operations chain is currently a hot battle area among the large providers. As we have noted, global custodians have taken different paths to achieve it. Notably, State Street argues the merits of its proprietary solution, obtained through the acquisition in 2017 of Charles River Development (CRD), a trading solutions and analytics provider.

Like BNP Paribas now connects with BlackRock Aladdin, both BNY Mellon and Northern Trust have struck collaborations with several system providers. Beside Aladdin these have both formed partnerships also with SimCorp and Bloomberg.